Washerwoman
by Apollo Wings
Summary: The June Challenge over on Dragon Age Fanfiction Writers over on Facebook. "Choose a well-known, popular scene in DA and tell it from the perspective of a character who is present, but not the main character." Goldanna - meeting Alistair and his lady-love. Part of the Magic And Lace storyline. Rated M for the warning at the beginning of the story.


**Author note:** A challenge over on Fbook from Dragon Age Fanfiction Writers! Who else couldn't see me writing her! 1st person POV, because it feels right.

**Challenge:** Choose a well-known, popular scene in DA and tell it from the perspective of a character who is present, but not the main character.

**Technically, this story will be canonical to the story 'Magic And Lace'.**

**Disclaimer:** As always, Bioware owns all but my soul.

**Rated: M** - for mentions of underage sexual activity, racial abuse, death, and rape. **If you find it too offensive, DO NOT READ.**

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Washerwoman

My back had been killing me all day. Hours upon hours with my hands in caustic lye and scrubbing until my fingers all but bled to get the sweat stains out of Mistress Sophia's undergarments and the ruddy grass stains out of the magistrate's knee britches. I could tell his wife something about what he's doing I could, but I don't! She don't have the grass stains up the back of those gowns they have that foreigner wash, I seen!

Still the work beckons. It piles up in more stinking heaps that I have to sort so the colours don't run into each other or my bloody pittance won't be paid. "Ow! Mam! Gertie pulled my hair!"

With a defeated sigh I collapsed into my elbows over the basin, feeling the piping hot water steam over my already sweated face. The loose strands of lank hair fell forward into the yellowed suds. "Please. Maker give me strength." I muttered beneath my breath. Five children, all too young to send off to work and no money even for the Chantry education. Sometimes I wonder how it all happened, how I managed to live long enough to have them all. Unlike my own mother...

"Robin hit me!" I clenched my teeth.

"Enough! Maker, you'll all be the end of me!" I turned sharply, seeing Gertie in the process of curling her grubby fist in the direction of Robin. Robin was sticking his tongue out at his younger sister, twisting his freckled face into a scrunched up sneer as he did so. Both children froze, turning their faces to mine as if butter couldn't melt in their mouths. "Play nicely in here or get outside and out of my hair!"

My two eldest looked at each other before scrambling to their feet, Gertie dragging her ragdoll and Robin running after her, threatening to steal it away. I closed my eyes for a moment.

Andraste preserve my sanity but it was always so hard. Nothing went easily, from living in the streets of the Alienage as a girl because I was stupid enough to mention my mother was an elf, no elf wants to take a half-blooded child in, they look human. They'd get accused of stealing that child. I got spat on by a lot of fully human children.

The Chantry had been no help. All word but no charity for the truly unfortunate, if you could spare the coin for their collection plate then it might have been possible to get a bowl of broth or pottage. I did things, horrid things I wasn't proud of in order to survive. I wasn't pretty enough for the Pearl, even when I was twelve, skinny and covered in mud none of the brothels down at the docks looked my way so the streets were the only way I could get by.

The best thing to come from that time was Robin. I can't even remember which of those vile-smelling pigs fathered him, I was working most nights just to put a bit of food in my belly those days, sometimes they didn't even pay... I always prayed that it wasn't one of them.

I started taking in clothes when I should have been in confinement, having my whims met by an adoring husband. Fairytales my mother used to read to me, the ruddy time passes too quickly. I gave birth in the scullery, it was agony, every second. I swore every word I knew, I probably made a few more up, vomited my guts out until it was blood and bile that retched from my mouth, and in the end I had Robin. I barely had the strength to get back to work, wrapping the babe up in the old rags the lady of the house was throwing away because they were too worn to even use for her menses. I feared he wouldn't live.

The first time I saw his tiny face something that had dried up and shrivelled started to beat for that babe. I met my dear Samuel working in that scullery, having the privileges of waste food and candle stubs as I did. He was just a sableboy, always wanted to be something better than what we were made to be. I fell in love with him from the moment he spoke to me. Gertie, the twins - Sam and Hunter, then baby Taylor were so quick after that. But, we made do. Married by a Chantry Sister.

Then he was called up into the Kings Regiments. I didn't want him to go. I begged that damned fool not to go, but being called up was called up. He had to. My Sam, one of the boys from his troop came by with the widow ribbon and what the army paid out for people like us. It was enough for the rent on our house for a few months, close to the Alienage because of my blood, because of my children's blood. I still got spat on occasionally. People mutter horrible words about how my children don't have a father in the house. They call me a whore, a knife-ear-blooded slut.

Sometimes I wonder if they were right about me. I went back to taking in laundry during the day and whoring myself out at night to continue to pay for the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. I don't get much sleep.

I looked down, realising that in my painful reminiscence I'd scrubbed over the washboard until the grass stain was a memory and nothing else. Well would you look at that! Working hard at something paid off for once!

I settled into the routine, my apron getting gradually wetter, hair falling out of the tight bun it had been in until it stuck to sweat-sticky cheeks. I huffed, wringing out the last of the linens and shirts from the last batch. I'd probably get a good five coppers per pound of weight.

It was absent-minded, how I heard Taylor start crying. I wiped my wrinkled hands on the bottom of my apron, hurrying over to the room I shared with all of my children. The smell of fresh urine and that foulness that only babes could make hit my nose. My back was really hurting now.

I shushed him as I changed the wet nappy, wiping and soothing the elfroot salve I make from the stuff that grows out of the crack in the floorboard. Finally changed and put back to sleep, I slung the soiled nappy into the sink. More washing, it never ended.

I wish Sam would open that door, he'd look at me and claim I was the most beautiful thing he'd seen, even smelling of Maker-knows-what with my hands creased and burnt from the stuff my hands had been in all day. I miss him more than I ever told him. "Mama! Mama!"

I creaked, my back clicked and bent to the sound of Sam Junior running in through the back door, his twin like a shadow after him. "Don't run! You'll knock into the wash-"

I was too late, already the boy smacked forehead first into the wooden wash-tub. He fell backwards onto his behind, screaming as if a demon was about to possess him. On cue, Taylor started up and Hunter joined in with his twin.

It never bloody ends. I looked up to see two figures in the doorway, a blond man and brown haired woman, both looking well-to-do and earnest. That was what they were yelling about -"I'll be with you in a second. Five coppers for a pound of linens, six if it's too soiled and don't go to that foreign woman down the street, she'll rob you blind she will. I'll be a moment, stay there."

I had to say something. I scooped Junior up, I didn't even hear if they said anything with the screaming ringing in my ears like the bells of the Chantry at the crack of dawn. I picked up a wet cloth, applying it to Junior's head in the dim bedroom and passed him half the stick of carrot from my apron pocket. He grabbed it greedily, suckling it like a sweetmeat on Feast Day, no longer crying. As I passed Hunter I passed him the other half. Like his twin, the boy toddled quite happily away, without a thought to his bawling in search of his other half. One handedly I picked up Taylor, holding him in the crook of my arm and giving him a pinky finger to suck on with his toothless gums.

His wailing subsided to grizzled sobs, trying to force himself to remain upset, cling onto my dress, and concentrate on lye-soaked finger all at the same time.

I breathed a bit easier, looking at my doorway to see both the well-dressed people standing there, puzzled but half-way to frayed tempers for having to wait. I could cope with that, I didn't need snobbish knights and their wives looking down on me. I worked my way here. It wasn't high up but every inch it was paid for by sweat. Probably trying to make sure her husband didn't have it off with the whore washerwoman. "Are you Goldanna of Redcliffe?" The blond knight rubbed the back of his neck nervously, gritting his teeth in a grimace, and nose wrinkling. The smell of lye and piss, I'd gotten too used to it.

"Who wants to know?" I shrugged my shoulder, bouncing Taylor to help console his grizzling. The sound bore into my skull with each passing second.

"I, I don't know how to say this-"

"Say it, just not so loud. I know what I am, my children don't need to hear vulgarities though." I sniffed. The woman who was clinging to his shadow gave him a furrow of her brow as he looked at her, gulping. I don't remember him, not a customer. Pin it on some other run down washerwoman why don't you!

"I think I'm your brother." I stopped my line of thought where it was. What!

"Eh? Don't have no brother, I ain't got nothing worth having from inheritance." I narrowed my eyes. It was like that sort.

"Your mother _was_ a maid in Redcliffe and... died giving birth?" The woman piped up. She had a snottier accent, I calls them as I sees them. Posh nobs.

"Happens to a lot of people." It weren't worth getting angry. Anger chased off custom, if these ones wanted to poke fun at me they could as long as nothing got nicked or my children didn't get hurt. I'd bite that prissy cow before they got hurt. The two looked sceptically at each other. "Yes all right! She did. Now if you're not here to hand over washing then I'm sure there's better things to do with your time. I have better things to do with mine."

"I'm your brother. King Maric, our mother-" The man protested. Suddenly it clicked.

"My... brother." The words formed sluggish. "You were the fault our mother died!"

He winced as if whipped. "I'd hardly say it was _his _fault!" The posh nob woman hissed.

"No, it ain't. It's that ruddy King that knocked her up. Kings can pay for those mage healers for their Queens but a servant girl who fell on her back for him ain't worth that. I wondered how they were harping on about that bastard that what's going to be King." I suddenly felt very untidy, covered in lye-water, smelling on high heaven of sweat, piss, and the dampness of this house doesn't help. My hair's wet from sweat from root to ear, in messy, bedraggled clumps as if I'd been through a hedge backwards.

They pair didn't say a word, glancing between each other and gulping. They knew it to be true.

"They said you died." I finally mentioned. Taylor slumped into my hand, asleep again. Tiredly I laid him back down on the blankets in the drawers that served as his cot. "They said that babe was dead, not to worry my little head about it, have me a gold coin and packed me on the first wagon to Denerim."

"I'm sorry." The blond man, my half-brother - what lot of good that did me half-whispered.

"Fat lot of good sorrys do around here." My voice rose in pitch. A small, round head with Sam's blue eyes peeked around the doorframe of the bedroom, followed by another. "That coin dried up quick it did. I had to work my fingers to the bone to nearly starve my own children! What's a King going to do with his niece and nephews looking like runts eh?"

The man, I didn't even know his name. He did this to me, he'd made me upset, he awoke the anger. I didn't know if he was telling the truth, for all I knew he was lying, some cruel jester. He muttered something I couldn't hear, so focused on my own bubbling rage, to the posh nob woman. She shook her head in a no. "I can't do anything, I just want to, you know... get to know you." He smiled.

I grit my teeth. "What's the ruddy point? You killed our mother or your Kingly father did. Nobody cared before. Go, and take that bloody tart with you, if'n the wind changes her face'll stay the same that way forever."

The woman audibly slapped a hand on the shiny metal on his arm, jaw squared. "No. We should go. I don't know why I even came here anyway."

They both left without another word, the posh nob woman glaring daggers at me until they were out of sight. Junior crept out from the only other room of the house, sucking on his end of the carrot with one hand outstretched for me. He pulled it out with a pop. "Who tha'?"

"Just some nasty people. Come on, I'll make some mince pie once Gertie and Robin come in, feed you up for the winter." Hunter crashed into the back of his twin as they both clung to my legs.

It felt good getting it all off my chest.


End file.
